Unbelievable. A once-in-a-decade event. Enjoy it while it lasts. YNet, the largest Israeli news site (in Hebrew, at least) is leading with a story about the next Jewish decade.
Of course, the story is negative, predicting a shrinking Diaspora and a demographic crisis in Israel. But at least we’ve discovered how to punch through Israeli media’s deep disdain for Jewish issues: wait a decade, make it grim.
Here it is, preserved as evidence of this rare event:
Anshel Pfeffer, my colleague at Ha’aretz, reports from the frontlines of the ongoing intra-haredi culture war in Israel:
Two Charedi news websites closed down this week and a wave of resignations has hit other sites following the strictest rabbinical ruling against the internet to date.
A letter signed two weeks ago by some of the most senior rabbis of the Charedi community in Israel, including Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Aharon Leib Steinman and the leaders of the main Chasidic sects, reiterates a “severe prohibition of private usage of internet in every home”.
But it particularly singled out the ostensibly Charedi websites which have flourished in recent years, supplying insider news and gossip to tens of thousands of eager readers.
These sites, according to the letter, disseminate “lies and terrible impurity”, besmirch the community and cause many to “use the filthy internet which has caused many to commit many serious sins of the Torah of a nature that should not be mentioned”.
The result so far is that two websites, which had invested large sums in design and a team of reporters and editors, have already closed down. Other sites which are trying to hold out have suffered a rash of resignations by editors and writers who are afraid of the consequences of defying their rabbis.
Hat tip: Religion and State in Israel
Another of the endless series of reports about the disgrace of Israeli officialdom’s treatment of converts – once again despite the approval of the conversion by the official Orthodox rabbinate.
The thing about power, it corrupts. And religious power? It just corrupts religion…
(Hat tip: Religion and State in Israel.)
Maksim and Alina were due to exchange their wedding vows in 10 weeks, but instead of being busy preparing for the joyful event, they have been going through a nightmare – Their marriage was not approved by the Chief Rabbinate clerks in Ashkelon, where the couple resides.
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Two weeks ago, after setting the wedding date, Maksim and Alina went to the Rabbinate in their hometown to open a file with a marriage registrar.
To their surprise, Ashkelon’s chief Rabbi Haim Bloy told the couple he will not approve their marriage, and suggested that they get registered in a different city.
“The rabbi explained that because Maksim only observes some of the mitzvot, we will have to register in a different city,” said Alina, explaining that “meanwhile I met with a different rabbi that agreed to register me, but not in my city, because in Ashkelon ‘they don’t register converts for marriage’.”
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Rabbi Shaul Farber, director of the Jewish Life Information Center (ITIM), said on Thursday that “it is not plausible that marriage registrars who are employed by the country and are getting paid by the Chief Rabbinate will make up their own mind whether to recognize documents issued by their employers.”
“Registrars who distrust the Chief Rabbinate must resign from their positions. If they don’t do it themselves, the state should do it,” Farber added.
Following this recent phenomenon, ITIM institution opened a hotline that will guide converts and help them bypass the rabbis. The hotline number is 1-700-500-507.
That’s the question at the heart of the Orthodox debate over Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, as Mati Wagner explains in a powerful piece in today’s JPost:
[Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch:] “Obviously we would ensure freedom of religious expression for Muslims. But Jews should also be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount as well, and if thousands of Jews were to demand to go up there there would be no way of stopping them.”
Rabinovitch, along with other rabbis such as former chief Sephardi Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu and Haifa Chief Rabbi She’ar Yeshuv Kohen, recommends building a synagogue on the Temple Mount as a place of prayer for Jews.Part of the debate centers on whether the great Maimonides himself tread on the Temple Mount when visiting Jerusalem in 1165.
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In contrast, haredi rabbis are vigorously opposed to going up to the Temple Mount….
“Jewish law, not the Arab world, determines when Jews can go up to the Temple Mount and when they cannot,” said [Rabbi Shmuel] Rabinovitz.
“The reason we are not allowed to go up is because the Temple Mount is our Holy of Holies and we have not merited being able to purify ourselves as we need to. We hope to go up there. But the time has not yet come.”
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“Those who go up to the Temple today and call themselves religious might be religious, but their religion is not Judaism,” added [Rabbi Aharon Moshe] Levin.
“Their religion is the warped, nationalisitic faith in the IDF’s might and in the god of warfare and bloodshed. The goal of their actions is to incite and to cause trouble. Our rabbis have already taught us that someone who rejects even one commandment for ideological reasons is considered an apostate.”
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Religious Zionists tend to see the creation of the State of Israel in religious terms, as part of a larger process of redemption that has already begun. Ensuring a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount is a sign of Jews’ appreciation for the incredible miracle of modern Jewish sovereignty and preparation for a future redemption that will undoubtedly include a rebuilt Temple.
In contrast, the haredi theological perspective is that the Jewish people are still deep in spiritual exile and the present physical reality of a Jewish state does not change the ruptured cosmic state of being out of God’s favor. Being distanced from our most holy place of worship is an appropriate expression of that spiritual exile.
If Israel is the beginning of the redemption of the world, then there is something galling in denying Israeli sovereignty over the Holy of Holies. If it is not, then unredeemed Jews in an unredeemed world should not pretend to be redeemed.
Another thought: When there is peace, can Jews and Muslims not share the site, with a synagogue alongside the mosque? Why not?
JPost